A photo tour of Djibouti City

I took a guided bus tour of Djibouti City. The poverty here is hard to capture with a drive by camera. Lots of people just sleep next to the road, bathe in the ocean and leave there waste where the urge finds them. The guide told us how Dubai is buying up lots of the area to build it into a great trade port like Dubai. The base gets 90% of it's supplies through Dubai, because it is the only modern shipping/warehouse area around that is fully stocked. Djibouti sits at a very strategic geographical crossroads, so Dubai is trying to build it up. Everyone around Djibouti has long histories of fighting each other, but Djibouti is seen as the neutral middle territory, like Switzerland. The goal is to develop Djibouti as a launching platform out into the rest of the neighboring countries for trade and resource development. The Chinese have been dumping a lot into this area while we have been busy in Iraq, but they have only focused on resource extraction, and not at building up the local populace. So the US is trying to push humanitarian missions to buildup the populace to prevent the area from becoming an Al Qaeda sanctuary, and help them become our allies. Part of this is to skew them away from the Chinese, or at least prevent them from being the only dominant party in the area. Click on the link below to see some of the pictures of the city.

Tour of Djibouti City

Africans making french food, and frenchies preserving African cheetahs

I went on two adventures into Djibouti. Last night I went to a French restaurant run by Africans. The food was good. My sponsor Dawn brought me with a bunch of her Marine friends. The Marine's are required to patrol the city and all areas around the base on a random basis, meet with locals, and build relationships to enhance security. So they know the areas pretty well. Plus they're Marines, so they're a little nuts. Not the best conversationalists, unless you like PT, standing watch, breaking hummers, drinking lots of Fanta, that sort of thing, but hey they took me out into town. Then I went to a local Cheetah Reserve run by some French ladies concerned about the local cheetah population. It was pretty cool, and very cheap. I got to walk around in the African shrub. It seems that in order to survive as a shrub in Africa, you need to grow long sharp thorns. I won't make a good shrub. Anyway, click the picture below to see the photos.

First excursions

Easter is coming....

We have had a pretty boring week so far, but I have taken lots of pictures!! So here they are. Logan got excited about Easter coming and found the bunny ears the other day.
Bruin built a "mouse house" after reading: If you take a mouse to school.
Logan tried to help....
And then the boys watched a little Mickey Mouse....even Dylan strained his head trying to see the TV.

Pictures from the trip and Djibouti

Kuwait, Qatar, Djibouti

Kathy is working on uploading pictures to this album. I had to e-mail them to her because my upload is too slow. I'll comment them as she does. (Click the picture above to see the whole album.)

My little farmer....

The weather here is starting to warm up finally and were we able to get out of the house the last couple of days. Bruin has already started helping around the farm, driving the tractor with his uncle Brandon, Logan is very eager to watch, but not quite ready to hop on the loud noisy tractor. They both enjoyed helped grandpa drive the snowplow around the yard and Logan liked it so much he nearly fell asleep in the truck. We are all getting excited about the snow melting and being able to play outside without a full snowsuit.


My three boys....
And here is a picture of the best baby smile I've been able to get from Dylan
The long Vermont winters can make you do crazy things..........

Another Super Duper Tuesday.....

After being canceled last week due to a huge snow storm that left us with another 5" of snow Bruin's had his Karate class again. AND HE FINALLY GOT HIS UNIFORM!!! Unfortunately, he is the only one in the class (the others didn't show up) so Bruin is getting private lessons until more kids show up interested in the class. I said unfortunately because he gets nervous and there are a bunch of people that watch him while waiting for their class to start. But I guess he'll get used to it. Here are some pictures that I took when we got home. He is so proud of his uniform and Logan cannot wait to start and get his uniform too.

Hopping across the globe

We left Columbia, SC on Thursday at around 5 pm. We stopped for 1.5 hours in NYC to refuel then flew to a small airfield in Germany to refuel for another 2 hours and then flew on to Kuwait. We arrived here about 2300 on the 29th, which means that I get February tax free, plus all of the bonus pays, yay! Kuwait and Djibouti are 8 hours ahead of EST. We are supposed to fly to Qatar tomorrow and then from there to Djibouti on Monday. It's great to finally be getting this trip started so that it can start getting finished. It's pretty warm here and dusty. Some of the more sheltered folks are in a bit of shell shock living in tents with shower trailers and outhouses. Seems down right fancy to me. The shower and bathroom trailers are a little nicer than one I used to use in Sicily. I'll post pictures when I get to Djibouti.